Conversations with Strangers: The Possessed Budgie

One hot Saturday when I had nothing to do, I decided to see how far north I could get by hitch-hiking. Starting in Cardiff, I caught my first lift to Merthyr Tydfil with a property lawyer called Dai, then a very boring ex-infantry sergeant dropped me off outside Brecon, then a man from Hay-on-Wye dropped me off at the Talgarth crossroads, and then I got a lift from an American called Doug, who was getting extremely lost in the footsteps of William Wordsworth. (Somewhat to my surprise, I’ve turned up in his blog.) He was going to Bala.

I’ve never been to Bala, I thought. I might go to Bala too.

True to form, we took a wrong turn up the Elan Valley, and after several spectacular dams, reservoirs and mountain roads we wound up in Aberystwyth! Undaunted, we set off to the north-east, and Doug dropped me off in Bala town centre just after 6pm. I caught a lift out of town and camped for the night in a field three miles outside Bala, among caravans, campervans and behemoth tents set up to sleep whole families, where my little 35 litre rucksack, two man tent and miniature stove made me like Gulliver among the Brobingnagians.

Next day I walked for half an hour until I found a lay-by on the right side of the road and wrote where I wanted to go on my whiteboard – an invaluable hitch-hiking tool. It would have looked something like this:

Another half-hour passed waving my thumb fruitlessly at the sparse traffic, and I was just thinking of writing ‘Dolgellau’ on the other side of my whiteboard and trying to hitch both ways, when a car pulled in. Quite a nice one, I noticed, scrambling in. Roomy, with a couple of cool accessories like a waste paper bin strapped to the gearbox, and a dream catcher dangling from the rear view mirror – ornamental, since the car didn’t look slept in. The driver introduced himself as Joe. He was bald, with dark glasses, a voice that managed to be simultaneously gravelly and camp and various tattoos, most notable of which were the four Chinese dragons spiralling around his left leg, symbolising the elements of earth, air, fire and water. He was quite cagey about what he did, beyond mentioning that he was semi-retired, and I wondered at first if he was some kind of minor rockstar I ought to know about. He reminded me of a distant relative who was part of The Scaffold, now best known for Lily the Pink. We chatted for a while about old Clint Eastwood movies and silly hats, and some way down the road he told me he was a psychic medium, and was just returning from a weekend visit to another psychic medium in Dolgellau.

I wondered where to take the conversation from here. Some would rate mediums worse than con-men. I come from a sceptic background – my father was not so much a lapsed Catholic as one who was never convinced in the first place. Thanks to Dad (and Douglas Adams) I grew up as a stout materialist, an agnostic verging on the atheist, and without feeling any particular need for a spiritual dimension in my life. Then again, I had a lot of friends who believed wholeheartedly in a spiritual dimension; a great admiration for the stories of Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, an occultist and a chaos magician respectively, and a determination not to offend my lift. Not that Joe seemed easily offended – in fact, he was a terrible tease.

‘So what do mediums talk about, when they get together?’ I asked, hoping for some professional gossip.

‘Dead people, mostly.’

‘Mmm.’ It would be crass, surely, to ask him if he’d communed with Elvis, or any well-known celebrities. ‘Do you have a good ghost story? Or is that kind of thing beneath you?’

‘I don’t have a ghost story, no. I do have a good possession story.’

Like any aspiring writer I listened eagerly, ready to plagiarise any gory details.

‘I got a call once from a woman down in Rhyl who had a possessed budgie.’

‘A possessed what?’

‘A possessed budgie. Now, just because I believe in the spirit world and the efficacy of certain essential oils doesn’t mean that my first thought wasn’t this woman is completely off her rocker. But I went down to Rhyl, and I met up with her and her husband in a car park – they were spiritualists like me – and they seemed perfectly sane. So I went back to their flat – perfectly ordinary place. The budgie’s tweeting away merrily in its cage, and the only odd thing was the stack of tapes in front of the TV.

“You can watch those, if you like,” said the woman. “They’ll back me up.”

What had happened is that her father used to own the budgie until he passed away, maybe a year ago. He’d always told her that when he’d passed on, he’d try and contact her, if it was possible, from the other side. The budgie stayed in her father’s flat for about three weeks while she sorted out the legacies, and then it came home with her. And about a week later, it started talking to her in her father’s voice.’

‘Can budgies talk?’ I asked, ‘I thought it was only parrots.’

‘No, budgies talk fine with a bit of training – so it was talking in her father’s voice, which wasn’t that surprising, but it was calling her by name, and it was saying things like “I told you I’d reach you, didn’t I?” Now you’re thinking he taught the budgie to say that before he died, aren’t you? So was I. But that wasn’t the whole story.

Maybe a month later, it started saying other things. Nasty things. Swearing at her, threatening her, telling her she was going to die. Really awful stuff. When she let it out of its cage it would start pecking her, dive-bombing her, attacking her.

I watched a few of the videos, and then I sat down with her and said that there might be an everyday explanation, but it could be that it was a negative spirit that had possessed the budgie and used her affection for her father and her belief in the supernatural as a way in. Once it had built up enough trust and affection to mess with her head, it started misbehaving.

“Why don’t you just shut the fuck up!” said the budgie. I jumped about a foot. It was the first thing it had said the whole time I’d been there. That pretty much settled it for us both.

She asked me what to do with it. I said throw it on the fire, but she wouldn’t do that, so I told her to give it away, but not to tell anyone about the negative spirit. Just say that it was your father’s, and you don’t want it any more. That way the spirit won’t have a psychological foothold, and won’t be able to bother anyone.

And that’s what she did.’

‘So someone in Rhyl still owns a possessed budgie?’ I asked.

Joe shrugged. ‘I guess so. It’s harmless, of course.’

Long after he’d dropped me off, I was trying to think of a rational explanation. Had the father planned the whole thing as a sick joke? Did the budgie learn the language off the TV? Was the husband, barely mentioned in Joe’s story, a more important character than he’d appeared? I loved the way the story sounded ludicrous at first, but built slowly to the point where you thought ‘yeah, I would be freaked out if this happened to me.’

6 thoughts on “Conversations with Strangers: The Possessed Budgie”

(Not sure if my first comment went through.) Wild story, Tom, and one that’s hard to top. I can understand perfectly why you went with it. I looked you up the other day, but I was too tired to read. Thanks for sending the link to your blog. My ten readers will enjoy hearing your side of the story, I think. I’m now following your blog, and I look forward to reading some more when I get a chance.

Thanks Tom, I must admit I did laugh at the end, however there are one or two inacuracies in you re-telling of my tale. I had been working in Tywyn in a spiritual capcity over the weekend as well as staying with a fellow medium, I am not bald but do have a crew cut…. However onto the important parts – The lady and her husband lived in a rather grand house, not a flat, I didn’t watch any of the videos or listen to any of her recording and the beastly budgie was also threatening her children. The the thing that convinced me her story was true is that while I was trying to make (like yourselft) some sort of logical explanation, the budgie in fact said “JOSEPH, why dont you just fucking shut up”. It was indeed a true and somewhat abridged version of an event in my career and happened back in the mid 90’s not last year. But hey…. for a guy studying English Lit and wanting to be a writer what good is a tale without embelishment. It was nice meeting you, I like your style and I am glad you got home safe. In love and light always Joseph